ico," said he; "do you not agree with a still, deep and tranquil pool, without me in the opinion that the finest moun- a ripple on its surface, but creating a rivtains in the world are those single cones er by its overflow. He asked me many of perpetual snow rising out of the splen- questions, but did not always wait for an did vegetation of the tropics? The Him- answer, the question itself suggesting alayas, although loftier, can scarcely make some reminiscence, or some thought which an equal impression; they lie further to he had evident pleasure in expressing. the north, without the belt of tropical I sat or walked, following his movegrowths, and their sides are dreary and ments, an eager listener, and speaking sterile in comparison. You remember in alternate English and German, until Orizaba," continued he; "here is an en- the time which he had granted to me had graving from a rough sketch of mine. I expired. hope you will find it correct." He rose and took down the illustrated folio which accompanied the last edition of his "Minor Writings," turned over the leaves and recalled, at each plate, some reminiscence of his American travel. "I still think," he remarked as he closed the book, "that Chimborazo is the grandest mountain in the world." He also spoke of our authors, and inquired particularly after Washington Irving, whom he had once seen. I told him I had the fortune to know Mr. Irving, and had seen him not long before leaving New-York. "He must be at least fifty years old," said Humboldt. "He is sev enty," I answered, "but as young as ever." "Ah!" said he, "I have lived so long that I have almost lost the consciousness of time. I belong to the age of Jefferson and Gallatin, and I heard of Washington's death while travelling in South America." Seifert at length reappeared and said to him, in a manner at once respectful and familiar, "It is time," and I took my leave. "You have travelled much, and seen many ruins," said Humboldt, as he gave me his hand again; "now you have seen one more." "Not a ruin," I could not help replying, "but a pyramid." For I pressed the hand which had touched those of Frederick the Great, of Forster, the companion of Capt. Cook, of Klopstock and Schiller, of Pitt, Napoleon, Josephine, the Marshals of the Empire, Jefferson, Hamilton, Wieland, Herder, Goethe, Cuvier, La Place, Gay-Lussac, Beethoven, Walter Scott-in short, of every great man whom Europe has produced for threequarters of a century. Ilooked into the eyes which had not only seen this living history of the world pass by, scene after scene, till the actors retired one by one, to return no more, but had beheld the cataract I have repeated but the smallest portion of Atures and the forests of the Cassiquiare, of his conversation, which flowed on in an Chimborazo, the Amazon and Popocatauninterrupted stream of the richest know- petl, the Altaian Alps of Siberia, the Tarledge. On recalling it to my mind, after tar steppes and the Caspian Sea. Such a leaving, I was surprised to find how great splendid circle of experience well befits a a number of subjects he had touched life of such generous devotion to science. upon, and how much he had said, or seem- I have never seen so sublime an example ed to have said-for he has the rare fac- of old age-crowned with imperishable ulty of placing a subject in the clearest success, full of the ripest wisdom, cheerand most vivid light by a few luminous ed and sweetened by the noblest attriwords-concerning each. He thought, as butes of the heart. A ruin indeed! he talked, without effort. I should com- No: a human temple, perfect as the pare his brain to the Fountain of Vaucluse | Parthenon. From Blackwood's Magazine. THE MANOR OF How to account for this strange adventure, or what explanation to put upon it, I can not tell, but it began after a very prosaic fashion rather more commonplace even than the circumstances under which the Laureate meditated his Legend of Godiva. After a long drive to a little country station, I found to my dismay, that I had missed the train. Missed the train! There was not another till twelve o'clock at noon of the next day, and it was then the afternoon between two and three o'clock; for the place in which I was so fortunate as to find myself, was one of the smallest of country stations on a "branch line." It seems extremely odd, looking back upon it, that there should have been such an unreasonable time to wait; but it did not puzzle, it only discomfited me at the time. And there was not even a single house, save the half-built little railway house itself, where dwelt the station-master, at this inhospitable station; so I had to be directed by that functionary, and by his solitary porter, how to get to Witcherley village, which lay a mile and a half off across the fields. It was a summer, but there had been a great deal of rain, and the roads, as I knew by my morning's experience, were "heavy," yet I set off with singular equanimity on my journey across the fields. Altogether I took the business very coolly, and made up my mind to it. It is astonishing how easily one can manage this in a certain frame of mind. It was rather a pretty country-especially when the sun came glancing down over it, finding out all the rain upon the leaves when it was only I that found them out instead of the sun. When pushing down a deep lane, my hat caught the great overhanging bough of a hawthorn, and shook over me a sparkling shower of water-drops, big and cool like so many diamonds. I can not say that I entirely enjoyed the impromptu baptism, WITCHERLEY. and the wet matted brambles underfoot was full of treacherous surprises, and the damp path under that magnificent seam of red-brown earth, which had caught my eye half a mile off, caught my foot now with unexampled tenacity. Notwithstanding, the road was pretty; a busy little husbandman of a breeze began to rustle out the young corn, and raise the feeble stalks which had been "laid" by the rain; and every thing grew lustily in the refreshed and sweetened atmosphere, through which the birds raised their universal twitter. There appeared white gable-ends, bits of orchard closely planted, a church-spire rising through the trees, and over the next stile I leaped into the extreme end of the little village street of Witcherley-a very rural little village indeed, lying, though within a mile and a half of a railway station, secure and quiet among the old Arcadian fields. Facing me was a great iron gate extremely ornamental, as things were made a hundred years ago, with a minute porter'slodge shut up, plainly intimating that few carriages rolled up that twilight avenue, to which entrance was given by a little postern-door at the side. The avenue was narrow, but the trees were great and old, and hid all appearance of the house to which they led. Then came three thatched cottages flanking at a little distance the moss-grown wall which extended down the road from the manorhouse gates; and then the path made a sharp turn round the abrupt corner of a gable which projected into it, the gray wall of which was lightened by one homely bow-window in the upper story, but nothing more. This being the Witcherley Arms, I went no further, though some distant cottages, gray, silent, and rude, caught my eye a little way on. The Witcherley Arms, indeed, was the hamlet of Witcherley-it was something between an inn and a farm-house, with long low rooms, small windows, and an irregu lar and rambling extent of building, which it was hard to assign any use for, and which seemed principally filled up with long passages leading to closets and cupboards and laundries in a prodigal and strange profusion. A few rude steps led to the door, within which, on one side, was a little bar, and on the other the common room of the inn. Just in front of the house, surrounded by a little plot of grass, stood a large old elm-tree, with the sign swung high among its branches; opposite was the gate of a farm-yard, and the dull walls of a half square of barns and offices; behind, the country seemed to swell into a bit of rising ground, covered with the woods of the manor-house; but the prospect before was of a rude district broken up by solitary roads, crossing the moorland, and apparently leading nowhere. One leisurely country-cart stood near the door, the horse standing still with dull patience, and that indescribable quiet consciousness that it matters nothing to any one how long the bumpkin stays inside, or the peacea ble brute without, which is only to be found in the extreme and undisturbed seclusion of very rural districts. I confess I entered the Witcherley Arms with a little dismay, and no great expectations of its comfort or good cheer. The public room was large enough, lighted with two casement windows, with a low unequal ceiling and a sanded floor. Two small tables in the windows, and one long one placed across the room behind, with a bristly supply of hard high-backed wooden chairs, were all the furniture. A slow country fellow in a smock frock, the driver of the cart, drank his beer sullenly at one of the smaller tables. The landlord loitered about between the open outer door and the "coffee-room," and I took my seat at the head of the big table, and suggested dinner to the open-eyed country maid, She was more startled than I expected by the idea. Dinner! there was boiled bacon in the house she knew, and ham and eggs were practicable. I was not disposed to be fastidious under present circumstances, so the cloth was spread, and the boiled bacon set before me, preparatory to the production of the more savory dish. To have a better look at me, the landlord came in and established himself beside the bumpkin in the window. These worthies were not at all of the ruffian kind, but, on the contrary, perfectly honest-looking, obtuse, and leisurely: their dialect was strange to my ear, and their voices confused; but I could make out that what they did talk about was the "Squire." Of course, the most natural topic in the world in a place so primitive; and I, examining my bacon, which was not inviting, paid little attention to them. By and by, however, the landlord loitered out again to the door; and there my attention was attracted at once by a voice without, as different as possible from their mumbling rural voices. This was followed immediately by a quick alert footstep, and then entered the room an old gentleman, little, carefully dressed, precise and particular, in a blue coat, with gilt buttons, a spotless white cravat, Hessian boots, and hair of which I could not say with certainty whether it was gray or powdered. He came in as a monarch comes into a humble corner of his dominions. There could be no doubt about his identity-this was the Squire. The Hodge at the window pulled his forelock reverentially; the old gentleman nodded to him, but turned his quick eye upon me-strangers were somewhat unusual at the Witcherley Arms-and then my boiled bacon, which I still only looked at! The Squire drew near with suave and compassionating courtesy: I told him my story-I had missed the train. train was entirely a new institution in this primitive corner of the country. The old gentleman evidently did not half approve of it, and treated my detention something in the light of a piece of retributive justice. "Ah! haste, haste! nothing else will please us nowadays," he said, shaking his head with dignity; "the good old coach, now, would have carried you comfortably, without the risk of a day's waiting or a broken limb; but novelty carries the day." I did not say that the railway was, after all, not so extreme a novelty in other parts of the world as in Witcherley, and I was rewarded for my forbearance. "If you do not mind waiting half an hour, and walking half a mile," added the Squire immediately, "I think I can promise you a better dinner than any thing you have here-a plain country table, sir, nothing more, and a house of the old style; but better than honest Giles's bacon, to which I see you don't take very kindly. He will give you a good beď, though a clean, comfortable bed. I have slept myself, sir, on occasion, at the Witcherley Arms." When he said this, some recollection or consciousness came for an instant across the old gentleman's countenance; and the landlord, who stood behind him, and who was also an old man, uttered what seemed to me a kind of suppressed groan. The Squire heard it, and turned round upon him quickly. "If your gable-room is not otherwise occupied to-night," said the old gentleman- "mind, I do not say it will, or is likely to be put the gentleman into it, Giles." back I saw the inmates of the Witcherley Arms at the door, in a little crowd gazing at him. The landscape must have been as familar to him as he was to these good people. I began to grow very curious. Was any thing going to happen to the old Squire ? The old Squire, however, was of the class of men who enjoy conversation, and relish a good listener. He led me down through the noiseless road, past the three cottages, to the manorial gates, with a pleasant little stream of remark and explanation, a little jaunty wit, a little caustic observation, great natural shrewdness, and some little knowledge of the world. Entering in by that little side-door to the avenue, was like coming out of daylight into sudden night. The road was narrow The landlord groaned again a singular affirmative, which roused my curiosity at once. Was it haunted? or what could there be of tragical or mysterious connect--the trees tall, old, and of luxuriant ed with the gable-room? growth. I did not wonder that his worship was proud of them, but, for myself, should have preferred something less gloomy. The line was long, too, and wound upwards by an irregular ascent; and the thick dark foliage concealed, till we had almost reached it, the manorhouse, which turned its turreted gable-end towards us, by no means unlike the Witcherley Arms. However, I had only to make my acknowledgments, and accept with thanks the Squire's proposal, and we set out immediately for the manor-house. My companion looked hale, active, and light of foot-scarcely sixty-a comely, well-preserved old gentleman, with a clear frosty complexion, blue eyes without a cloud, fcatures somewhat high and delicate, and altogether, in his refined and particular It was a house of no particular date or way, looked like the head of a long-lived character-old, irregular, and somewhat patriarchal race, who might live a picturesque-built of the gray limestone hundred years. He paused, however, of the district, spotted over with lichens, when we got to the corner, to look to the and covering here and there the angle of north over the broken country on which a wall with an old growth of exuberant the sunshine slanted as the day began to ivy-ivy so old, thick, and luxuriant, that wane. It was a wild solitary prospect, as there was no longer any shapeliness or different as possible from the softer distinctive character in the big, blunt, scenes through which I had come to Witch-glossy leaves. A small lawn before the erley. Those broken bits of road, rough cart-tracks over the moor, with heaps of stones piled here and there, the intention of which one could not decide upon; firtrees, all alone, and by themselves, growing singly at the angles of the road-sometimes the long horizontal gleam of water in a deep cutting-sometimes a green bit of moss, prophetic of pitfall and quagmire-and no visible moving thing upon the whole scene. The picture to me was somewhat desolate. My new friend, however, gazed upon it with a lingering eye, sighed, did not say any thingbut, turning round with a little vehemence, took some highly-flavored snuff from a small gold box, and seemed under cover of this innocent stimulant, to shake off some emotion. As he did so, looking door, graced with one clipped yew-tree, was the only glimpse of air or daylight, so far as I could see, about the house; for the trees closed in on every side, as if to shut it out entirely from all chance of seeing or being seen. The big hall-door opened from without, and I followed the Squire with no small curiosity into the noiseless house, in which I could not hear a single domestic sound. Perhaps drawing-rooms were not in common use at Witcherley-at all events, we went at once to the dining-room, a large long apartment, with an ample fire-place at the upper end-three long windows on one side, and a curious embayed alcove in the corner, projecting from the room like an after-thought of the builder. To this pretty recess you descended by a single step from the level of the dining-room, and it | dinner; and simultaneously with the silwas lighted by a broad, Elizabethan oriel ver tureen appeared an old lady, who window, with a cushioned seat all round, dropped me a noiseless courtesy, and took fastened to the wall. We went here, naturally passing by the long dining-table, which occupied the almost entire midspace of the apartment. These three long dining-room windows looked out upon the lawn and the clipped yew-tree the oriel looked upon nothing, but was closely overshadowed by a group of limetrees casting down a tender, cold, green light through their delicate wavering leaves. There were old panel portraits on the walls, old crimson hangings, a carpet, of which all the colors were blended and indistinguishable with old age. The chairs in the recess were covered with embroidery as faded as the carpet; every thing bore the same tone of antiquity. At the same time, every thing appeared in the most exemplary order, well preserved and graceful, without a trace of wealth, and with many traces of frugality, yet undebased by any touch of shabbiness. And as the Squire placed himself in the stiff elbow-chair in this pleasant little alcove, and cast his eye with becoming dignity down the long line of the room, I could not but recognize a pleasant and suitable congeniality between my host and his house. Presently a grave, middle-aged manservant entered the room, and busied himself very quietly spreading the table -the Squire in the mean time entering upon a polite and good-humored catechetical examination of myself; but pausing now and then to address a word to Joseph, which Joseph answered with extreme brevity and great respectfulness. There was nothing inquisitive or disagreeable in the Squire's inquiries; on the contrary, they were pleasant indications of the kindly interest which an old man often shows in a young one unexpectedly thrown into his path. I was by no means uninterested, meanwhile, in the slowly-completed arrangements of the dinner-table, all accomplished so quietly. When Joseph had nearly finished his operations, a tall young fellow in a shooting-coat, sullen, loutish, and down-looking, lounged into the room, and threw himself into an easy-chair. He did not bear a single feature of resemblance to the courtly old beau beside me, yet was his son notwithstanding beyond all controversy-the heir of the house. Then came the earlier installments of the her seat at the head of the table, without a word. I could make nothing whatever of this mistress of the house. She was dressed in some faded rich brocaded dress, entirely harmonizing with the carpets and the embroidered chairs, and wore a large faint brooch at her neck, with a halfobliterated miniature, set round with dull yellow pearls. She sent me soup, and carved the dishes placed before her in a noiseless, seemingly motionless way, which there was no comprehending; and was either the most mechanical automaton in existence, or a person stunned and petrified. The young Squire sat opposite myself, one person only at the long vacant side of the table, with his back to the three windows. An uneasy air of shame, sullenness, and half-resentment hung about him, and he, too, never spoke. In spite, however, of this uncomfortable companionship, the Squire, in his place at the foot of the table, kept up his pleasant, lively, vivacious stream of conversation without the slightest damp or restraint-gave forth his old-fashioned formal witticisms his maxims of the old world, his dignified country-gentleman reflections upon the errors of the new. Silent sat the presiding shadow at the head-silent the lout in the middle. The old servant, grave, solemn, and almost awe-stricken, moved silently about behind; yet, little assisted by my own discomposed and embarrassed responses, there was quite a lively sound of conversation at the table, kept up by the brave old Squire. With the conclusion of the dinner, and with another little noiseless courtesy, the old lady disappeared as she came. I had not heard the faintest whisper of her voice during the whole time, nor observed her looking at any one; and it was almost a relief to hear her dress rustle softly as she glided out of the room. It seemed to me, however, that our attendant took an unnecessarily long time in arranging the few plates of fruit and placing the wine upon the table; and lingered with visible anxiety, casting stealthy looks of mingled awe and sympathy at his master, and exercising a watchful and jealous observation of the young Squire. The old Squire, however, took no notice, for his part, of the sullenness of his heir, or the watch of Joseph, but pared his apple briskly, and |